The Maynifesto is out (lets be honest here; other Manifestos are just exercises in dreaming). The rumours of what will happen post Election are in full swing.
The Conservatives are ‘relaunching’ their campaign after Theresa May’s single handed attempt at throwing the election, has needed an intervention.
Yet the reality is that May will win. And win comfortably, increasing her majority. Talk of a Corbyn surge is just that. Talk. He still is more than 5% behind and the excitement about how the gap has closed is getting carried away. Indeed it only helps the Conservatives to get their vote out. Corbyn also started from such a dreadful position, it just makes the effect look more dramatic than it really is and May was always going to struggle to get much more support after the local election peak.
The thing is none of the political parties are covering themselves in glory. No one is offering what people want. In terms of voters not being impressed by their leadership, I don’t think many are really happy and are just going for the best available option out of a particular bad crop. It does not bode well for the future regardless of who wins. We should be worried about the quality of debate and our representatives regardless of who we end up voting for.
Come election night there are going to be some particularly shocking results. The idea that there is a national trend is not right. This election is highly localised in nature. Which will result in these surprises to outsiders but perhaps not locals.
June 9th will make for a lot of soul searching I suspect. For all three parties. There will be leadership questions that remain unanswered and need to be resolved. There are still massive political divides in parties. Heads will roll and need to be replaced. Expectations and the reality have been out of line for all three in one way or another.
Yet all of this is a side show to an extent. Whilst we all scrabble around trying to work it out amongst ourselves, the rest of the world moves forward without us. And the clock ticks.
Merkel has set the tone for the next round of Brexit. It is regarded by the German political elite as ‘Trumpandbrexit’. We are part of the same phenomenon even though many see it through different eyes in this country. This lack of awareness of how we are perceived outside our own walls is something we will face head on at some point and it won’t be good.
Trump himself is up to his neck in scandal. And has risked our safety as a direct result. May might have held her hand but that relationship does not seem to be going well for us. We are between a rock and a hard place and are drifting out to see.
Global Britain has never seemed so lonely and isolated. The rosy future we were promised, becomes ever more a distant dream rather than a dawn of a new age.
Reality will get us in the end.